I've been asked how gender plays into this topic of cyberbullying in a few interviews now, and oddly enough, I've surprised myself at how little I've even considered it since the issue is so universal. It's also a complicated issue for me because I feel like even connecting cyberbullying (or other aspects of cyberaggression and cyberharassment -- which you can read about in the previous post about the panel with Sen. Amy Klobuchar last week) to gender can perpetuate some unfair and even harmful gender stereotypes.
So, first we should look at the facts. Amanda Lenhart has done an amazing job of collecting and disseminating some very interesting, telling research about young people and their use of interactive media for many years for The Pew Internet and American Life project; Amanda and I are former classmates (a year or so apart) from Georgetown University's Communication, Culture and Technology program -- she's incredibly smart and savvy -- and I think Pew Research is among the best out there, so I see this data as excellent and reliable (and you can check it out in its entirety here). Over a third of adolescents in this country have reported that they have been harassed online -- and this can include bullying, having material forwarded or posted without permission, and a number of other harassing behaviors that has to do with one or more students exerting power in a negative way over other students. According to this same, data more girls than boys report having been harassed in some way online. No data was available that broke down sexual orientation, but the patterns and anecdotal definitely show that LGBT kids (or those who are perceived to be LGBT) also are highly victimized online.
This is not terribly surprising if you consider that a lot of the online harassment is actually sexual harassment, which is largely male to female, according to both statistics and anecdotal evidence.
However, I start getting annoyed when there is an assumption that girls are bullied more because "girls are mean" and "girls are conniving" and "girls are backbiting" because "that's just how girls are with each other." My own research has shown that indeed, girls can be violent and they can partake in bullying, but to fall back on these tropes as if they're common knowledge both simplifies and trivializes a very serious problem. It shrugs it off, absolving violent or harmful behavior in some ways by chalking it up to a gender stereotype.
And boys bully boys, too. This often gets lost in the argument in cyberbullying, for some reason, even though it looks really obvious typed on the page here. Americans can get so caught up in the mainstream media's over-hyping of girl fighting -- particularly when it's "caught on tape" and uploaded to YouTube so TV stations can air footage repeatedly -- that it just stokes the fire of the mean girl stereotype. I suppose it's sensational footage -- sensational storytelling -- because of both the abhorrent nature of the story ("girls are supposed to be nice and well-bred" -- an old-school stereotype but it still holds more true than people think) and the icky sexualization part of it ("girl on girl action" -- like porn). At least that's my take on why these stories always seem to get covered instead of the stories about boys who upload their fights and bullying incidents to YouTube.
That's my take. My personal solution is pretty simple. We need to pay more attention to teaching young people media literacy and new media literacy pretty early on. Explain that when you post something on Facebook meant to harm somebody else that the effect is immediate and incredibly broad, and it can easily encourage kind of a "piling on" effect (consider the "Like" button). We should teach them to stop this kind of behavior. You can even report it to Facebook and the bully will be threatened with losing their account for life -- which really is a pretty serious punishment. More importantly, I'd love to see more discussions about good ol' fashioned civility. We live in loud angry times, and the computer screen makes it so easy to just get online and be as loud and angry as you want in writing without thinking much about the people who you affect on the other side of the computer screen. I actually have a few sentences in every one of my college syllabi about civility and discuss what it means to share within a civil classroom or online forum, and I think that this small acknowledgment -- this setting of ground rules -- goes a long way.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Cyberaggression Panel with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Part I)
OK, part of this post is going to be a re-hash from my other blog about New Media and Youth, and part of it is going to address what gender has to do with cyberbullying and "cyberaggression" in general. Here's Part I, which is a reprint:
I had the distinct honor of being asked to serve as a panelist for an event sponsored and moderated by Minnesota's own Senator Amy Klobuchar (editorial note: I've always been a fan, and now that I've met her in person, I'm an even bigger fan) last week at Augsburg College. The local media covered it fairly nicely, and it was an amazing opportunity for me to meet some people who have a true passion for battling cyberaggression (which covers a lot, by the way -- online spying and surveillance, cyberbullying, cyberharassment, misrepresentation online, etc.). In addition to the Senator, the panel included Nikki Jackson Colaco, Public Policy Manager of Facebook;
Detective Brian Hill, computer forensics investigator with the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office;and Lynn Miland, of Northfield, the parent of a child who was bullied and now a parent advocate with the National Center for Bullying Prevention, which is affiliated with Minnesota-based PACER Center, a national center that champions children with disabilities. (Lynn's story about her daughter was particularly touching and troubling, and I was really happy she was able to do the panel and tell her story.)
The experience was mostly good. Mostly. Maybe I'm being hypersensitive as a journalism professor (specifically one who just taught a lesson in good, ethical headline-writing in class this morning), but The Star-Tribune literally seized upon one fragment of one of my sentences about defriending and blocking falling under the category of cyberbullying -- I assume because they found it to be ridiculous, and I agree it sounds ridiculous without the context of the rest of the remarks. The headline and story ran like this:
'Defriending' latest form of adolescent cyberbullying
Anyway, obviously, there's more to it. :-)
Here are a few of the other stories about the panel:
Q&A With Parents and Experts About Cyberbullying from Fox9-Twin Cities
Cyberbullying Highlighted at Augsburg Event from KARE11
and
Klobuchar, panel address changing face of harassment online from The Minnesota Daily
And if you're interested, here are my basic remarks. I went a little bit off the cuff and edited out a few things that had already been said before it was my turn to talk, but this is the gist.
Notes for Cyberbully Panel with Sen. Klobuchar
In a national survey conducted with about 3000 teens over a three-year time period, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 93 percent of adolescents age 12-17 surveyed go online, and 63 percent of those go online at least once daily – most of them from home, though a large number are also able to access the internet from their mobile phone, and at school or a library.
32 percent of adolescents report that they have been the victim of online harassment – from having an embarrassing photo posted of them on a social networking site without their consent, forwarding an email or text or instant message without their consent, or had a rumor spread about them online. In my own research, young teens reported instances of just being shut out completely by their peers – from being de-friended on a massive scale on Facebook to being deleted from a friend list on Instant Messaging, which is almost as devastating for many of them.
So, over a third of our adolescents have reported behavior like this, which is a huge number, but let’s face it. Even 1 percent is too high a number of kids reporting being victimized by bullies online. Although we hear about some very extreme instances of cyber-aggression from the mass media, it must be noted that less extreme instances happen all the time to all kinds of different kids and young adults, and we need to pay attention.
You sometimes hear people say, “People have been bullied since the beginning of time,” and that’s true. However, this type of bullying is different from the type of bullying that takes place on the schoolyard because when you go home at the end of the day and retreat to your room – a zone that is supposedly safe – the bullying continues. There is little escape.
Social networking sites make it even more difficult for victims because they make it so easy for the bullies to instantly post something mean or embarrassing about them to hundreds and potentially thousands of peers. The impact is immediate because the “attack” can be accomplished at the click of a mouse. There is little defense against this type of practice. Unlike when your parent teaches you to fight for yourself on the playground, if you stick up for yourself online, you risk even more ridicule and aggression.
Research shows that people often say things online that they would not have said in person, and the computer screen can have a de-humanizing, de-sensitizing effect on behavior. This is one factor that drives adolescents who might otherwise not engage in bullying or harassment.
I think we all have to agree, too, that to share a bully’s post or comment on it truly makes you complicit in the bullying process. A lot of people don’t think about it that way, but social networks allow for a real piling on effect that even previous types of cyberaggression did not.
What can be done? First of all, discussions like this one go a long way in educating the public about the problem and moving us beyond the sensational media stories to actually thinking about what we can do about the problem. We need to acknowledge as a culture, that cyberbullying is prevalent and a serious issue that has to be addressed.
There is a true lack of new media literacy among a lot of adults that makes this a tough issue to tackle because they literally have no understanding of how online technology works in the first place. That’s a real problem. More adults, especially parents and teachers but also people with no connections to young people, need to become educated on how this works – open a Facebook account yourself and use it. Get acquainted with the technology so you understand how it works and what can be done using it, and then you’ll better understand the issues and what’s at stake here (legally, culturally, and so on).
The other really important part of the equation is that parents and educators need to agree that we should be teaching our kids civility – both online and offline – at a very young age. We need to teach them the consequences of online bullying – tell them stories about real-life instances of cyber-aggression and how it truly affected a person’s life.
I had the distinct honor of being asked to serve as a panelist for an event sponsored and moderated by Minnesota's own Senator Amy Klobuchar (editorial note: I've always been a fan, and now that I've met her in person, I'm an even bigger fan) last week at Augsburg College. The local media covered it fairly nicely, and it was an amazing opportunity for me to meet some people who have a true passion for battling cyberaggression (which covers a lot, by the way -- online spying and surveillance, cyberbullying, cyberharassment, misrepresentation online, etc.). In addition to the Senator, the panel included Nikki Jackson Colaco, Public Policy Manager of Facebook;
Detective Brian Hill, computer forensics investigator with the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office;and Lynn Miland, of Northfield, the parent of a child who was bullied and now a parent advocate with the National Center for Bullying Prevention, which is affiliated with Minnesota-based PACER Center, a national center that champions children with disabilities. (Lynn's story about her daughter was particularly touching and troubling, and I was really happy she was able to do the panel and tell her story.)
The experience was mostly good. Mostly. Maybe I'm being hypersensitive as a journalism professor (specifically one who just taught a lesson in good, ethical headline-writing in class this morning), but The Star-Tribune literally seized upon one fragment of one of my sentences about defriending and blocking falling under the category of cyberbullying -- I assume because they found it to be ridiculous, and I agree it sounds ridiculous without the context of the rest of the remarks. The headline and story ran like this:
'Defriending' latest form of adolescent cyberbullying
Anyway, obviously, there's more to it. :-)
Here are a few of the other stories about the panel:
Q&A With Parents and Experts About Cyberbullying from Fox9-Twin Cities
Cyberbullying Highlighted at Augsburg Event from KARE11
and
Klobuchar, panel address changing face of harassment online from The Minnesota Daily
And if you're interested, here are my basic remarks. I went a little bit off the cuff and edited out a few things that had already been said before it was my turn to talk, but this is the gist.
Notes for Cyberbully Panel with Sen. Klobuchar
In a national survey conducted with about 3000 teens over a three-year time period, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 93 percent of adolescents age 12-17 surveyed go online, and 63 percent of those go online at least once daily – most of them from home, though a large number are also able to access the internet from their mobile phone, and at school or a library.
32 percent of adolescents report that they have been the victim of online harassment – from having an embarrassing photo posted of them on a social networking site without their consent, forwarding an email or text or instant message without their consent, or had a rumor spread about them online. In my own research, young teens reported instances of just being shut out completely by their peers – from being de-friended on a massive scale on Facebook to being deleted from a friend list on Instant Messaging, which is almost as devastating for many of them.
So, over a third of our adolescents have reported behavior like this, which is a huge number, but let’s face it. Even 1 percent is too high a number of kids reporting being victimized by bullies online. Although we hear about some very extreme instances of cyber-aggression from the mass media, it must be noted that less extreme instances happen all the time to all kinds of different kids and young adults, and we need to pay attention.
You sometimes hear people say, “People have been bullied since the beginning of time,” and that’s true. However, this type of bullying is different from the type of bullying that takes place on the schoolyard because when you go home at the end of the day and retreat to your room – a zone that is supposedly safe – the bullying continues. There is little escape.
Social networking sites make it even more difficult for victims because they make it so easy for the bullies to instantly post something mean or embarrassing about them to hundreds and potentially thousands of peers. The impact is immediate because the “attack” can be accomplished at the click of a mouse. There is little defense against this type of practice. Unlike when your parent teaches you to fight for yourself on the playground, if you stick up for yourself online, you risk even more ridicule and aggression.
Research shows that people often say things online that they would not have said in person, and the computer screen can have a de-humanizing, de-sensitizing effect on behavior. This is one factor that drives adolescents who might otherwise not engage in bullying or harassment.
I think we all have to agree, too, that to share a bully’s post or comment on it truly makes you complicit in the bullying process. A lot of people don’t think about it that way, but social networks allow for a real piling on effect that even previous types of cyberaggression did not.
What can be done? First of all, discussions like this one go a long way in educating the public about the problem and moving us beyond the sensational media stories to actually thinking about what we can do about the problem. We need to acknowledge as a culture, that cyberbullying is prevalent and a serious issue that has to be addressed.
There is a true lack of new media literacy among a lot of adults that makes this a tough issue to tackle because they literally have no understanding of how online technology works in the first place. That’s a real problem. More adults, especially parents and teachers but also people with no connections to young people, need to become educated on how this works – open a Facebook account yourself and use it. Get acquainted with the technology so you understand how it works and what can be done using it, and then you’ll better understand the issues and what’s at stake here (legally, culturally, and so on).
The other really important part of the equation is that parents and educators need to agree that we should be teaching our kids civility – both online and offline – at a very young age. We need to teach them the consequences of online bullying – tell them stories about real-life instances of cyber-aggression and how it truly affected a person’s life.
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Discussion of cyberbullies on TPT "Almanac" last night, KSTP appearance
I apologize for the lack of real blog posts, but as you can see, I've been busy doing media appearances. I thought we did have an interesting discussion about social media and cyberbullying last night on the "Media Panel" segment of "Almanac," which airs on TPT, the Twin Cities PBS affiliate. Thought I'd share.
Here's a link (click on "Media Panel" when you get there):
"Almanac" -- October 15, 2010
I was also interviewed for the KSTP evening news by Collen Mahony the other night on the topic of law enforcement officials using social networks and mobile communication technologies to do research on crimes about minors. (It was part of one of the saddest stories I've ever heard, to be honest.) Here's that segment:
"Murder-Suicide Suspected in Deaths of Lakeland Teens"
Here's a link (click on "Media Panel" when you get there):
"Almanac" -- October 15, 2010
I was also interviewed for the KSTP evening news by Collen Mahony the other night on the topic of law enforcement officials using social networks and mobile communication technologies to do research on crimes about minors. (It was part of one of the saddest stories I've ever heard, to be honest.) Here's that segment:
"Murder-Suicide Suspected in Deaths of Lakeland Teens"
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Cyberbullying in the Age of Social Media: My Take
In case you were wondering about my take on cyberbullying, which has been in the news a lot lately (and probably should have been in the news long ago), here it is, in media-packaged form from the very good people at University of Minnesota News Services:
Cyberbullying has many facets, U of M expert says
The start of the new school year this fall has brought with it a national focus on and concern with cyberbullying. What is this form of bullying and how can it be addressed? A University of Minnesota expert who can comment on the current cyberbullying crisis is:
Shayla Thiel-Stern, assistant professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, College of Liberal Arts
Thiel-Stern says the issue of cyberbullying is far too complicated to blame on only one factor. “There is not just one root to this problem,” she says. “However, we can have a productive conversation about cyberbullying if we acknowledge the many facets of the issue.”
She says cyberbullying differs from traditional notions of bullying. “Some people note that bullying has always been around and that the current crisis is overblown,” Thiel-Stern says. “Children, teenagers and, yes, even adults, bully and have been bullied throughout human history, but it used to be that these instances were confined to a small space in ones life. You could usually escape a bully by going home at the end of the day, for example. The Internet makes this impossible.”
In addition, social media further complicates cyberbullying. “It is now so easy to ‘share’ media with the world that can negatively affect another person – whether it’s a complaint about another individual written as a Facebook status update, an out-of-context online conversation that someone has cut and paste or an embarrassing photo or video sent out to everyone on a friend list,” she says.
“Sadly, the victim has little recourse in this process. Once something about them is posted, it's out there. It is difficult for him or her to remove or refute the post before it continues to be shared.”
Thiel-Stern’s research interests focus on the intersections of new media, youth and gender as well as critical and cultural aspects of online journalism. Her first book, “Instant Identity: Adolescent Girls and the World of Instant Messaging,” was published by Peter Lang Publishing in March 2007.
To interview Thiel-Stern, contact Jeff Falk, University News Service, jfalk@umn.edu or (612) 626-1720.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Oh no! I forgot to post this feature on Rachel Simmons!
For whatever reason, I thought I posted and commented on this last month after it ran. Oops! Apparently my brain is on summer vacation mode. Better late than never, right? If you haven't heard of Rachel Simmons, you have probably heard of her book, "Odd Girl Out," which was one of the better takes on girls and bullying in a time period where a lot was published on the phenomenon of the "mean girl." I'm really anxious to read her upcoming book on girls' seemingly inherent (and contradictory?) need to be nice and good (this phenomenon is well-documented in the Brown and Gilligan's "classic," Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls Development, and in Finders' Just Girls, but it will be nice to have an updated take because obviously, the culture of "nice" is still alive and well and complicated as ever among tween and teen girls).
The New York Times a few weeks ago ran this great feature on Simmons' Girls Leadership Institute, which is kind of like a summer camp to help girls become more self-confident and insightful about all the garbage that surrounds them. What a totally cool idea, and how awesome that Simmons has used her resources to come up with this. Good stuff. Makes me feel a little bad about myself for just doing research on and writing about girls (oh no! I need to go to the summer camp! ;-)):
Girls, Uninterrupted by Jan Hoffman
Three cheers for Simmons and the great girls profiled in this piece.
The New York Times a few weeks ago ran this great feature on Simmons' Girls Leadership Institute, which is kind of like a summer camp to help girls become more self-confident and insightful about all the garbage that surrounds them. What a totally cool idea, and how awesome that Simmons has used her resources to come up with this. Good stuff. Makes me feel a little bad about myself for just doing research on and writing about girls (oh no! I need to go to the summer camp! ;-)):
Girls, Uninterrupted by Jan Hoffman
Three cheers for Simmons and the great girls profiled in this piece.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Miley, We Hardly Knew Ye (a.k.a. Who'da Thunk Girls Had Any Critical Bones in Their Bodies?)
As I pointed out a couple of years ago in one of my earliest blog posts, The New York Times has a particular fixation with stories about tween and teen girls, particularly their media preferences, and you can see this by the fact that I have yet another Times piece to point out.* Today's is a front-page Sunday Styles story about Miley Cyrus, known to many as Hannah Montana, a 17-year-old pop singer/actress who apparently is no longer worshiped by many of her once loyal tween and younger female fans because of her recent bouts of sexiness and strippery-ness (lap dancing, pole dancing, etc., etc.). The gist of the piece is she's sold fewer records in the young girl demographic and while several of the girls interviewed for the piece are put off by the new Miley, their moms are kind of like, "Giver her a break. She's almost 18." I loved the tone of the piece in general -- and again, actually interviewing her fans and former fans -- partly because of the journalist's assumption that the girls would not be so shocked or critical of this change in their idol. I was trying to remember my teen idols from fourth and fifth grade and thinking about whether this was indeed a new phenomenon, and immediately, Michael Jackson came to mind (I was also into Prince and Madonna, who were pretty much the opposite of a corporate image of wholesomeness). As soon as he started getting creepily weird -- which I think happened sometime during the reign of "Thriller" -- the posters came off my wall. Bottom line: Girls actually are critical consumers when given the education and opportunity. Don't sell them short.
And here's the story. I'd be interested if your take was the same as mine:
Fans of Miley Cyrus Question Her New Path
*I imagine that many of the Times' section editors and reporters probably have teen and tween girls as daughters or nieces and find their tastes and insights as fascinating as I do. That, or maybe they think their readers are primarily alarmed parents of teen and tween girls and this is a demographic consideration. Could be both.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Cyberbullying Piece in the New York Times
The New York Times ran quite a good piece on cyberbullying a few weeks ago now that I've been intended to re-post here; since it ran on a Monday, you might have missed it, but it was one of those front page into a double-page spread types of stories, so it was lengthy:
How Should Schools Handle Cyberbullying
One particular strength of the reporting, in my opinion, was the fact that they interviewed a number of students for the article. It's so rare that you get actual kids' voices in pieces like this one. In fact, my only issue with the article -- which I have to admit is something that I look for and so it probably bothers me more than the average person -- is the way bullying is conflated with sexual harassment, which is problematic. While calling sexual harassment of young girls bullying might get the problem the attention it deserves because culturally, it's more acceptable, it ignores what sexual harassment really is and doesn't address that further education is needed at a very early age in order to combat it.
How Should Schools Handle Cyberbullying
One particular strength of the reporting, in my opinion, was the fact that they interviewed a number of students for the article. It's so rare that you get actual kids' voices in pieces like this one. In fact, my only issue with the article -- which I have to admit is something that I look for and so it probably bothers me more than the average person -- is the way bullying is conflated with sexual harassment, which is problematic. While calling sexual harassment of young girls bullying might get the problem the attention it deserves because culturally, it's more acceptable, it ignores what sexual harassment really is and doesn't address that further education is needed at a very early age in order to combat it.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
'Your Hair is Probably Ugly' and Other Lessons Learned from 'Seventeen'
Thanks, Jen Keavy, for alerting me to this. I feel like public radio is the soundtrack to most of my days so I'm surprised I missed it, but this is a fun critical piece from "All Things Considered" on what happened when a female teenaged blogger (with no blog entries that I could find other than her Seventeen project, but that's OK -- I certainly can't be one to criticize, given that I've let a full year lapse between my own blog entries) decided to literally take all the advice Seventeen magazine could dole out for her for 30 days:
However, I strongly urge you to check out Jamie Keiles' take on her own research in blog form right here: http://www.theseventeenmagazineproject.com/
(The photo on the left is courtesy of Jamie Keiles and stolen brazenly from her website.)
Her actual project is kind of a work of genius (hey, she's going to the U. of Chicago in the fall, which also says a little something about her intellect) -- much more than the NPR segment could convey. You can tell she's from the Jezebel generation in both her writing and visual style, and even though that isn't always a good thing in my book, I admit to getting pretty sucked into Keiles' project. Even in a completely non-academic egghead kind of way.
Monday, June 14, 2010
Orenstein asks: 'Do Gyrating Girls Becoming Sexting Young Women?'
(Photo by Rania Matar, NY Times)Actually, her New York Times Sunday Magazine online blurb editor asks that question, if you want to get picky, but I wanted to call some attention to Peggy Orenstein's piece titled "Girls Play Sexy" in the most recent magazine because while I am generally a very, very big fan of Orenstein's research and writing, this particular piece bugged me for some reason, and I'm still trying to put my finger on it. (Maybe it's just the blurb. I hate these cause-effect simplifications.)
First of all, while she's right to point out the issue of inevitable moral panic that follows every instance of a young women or girl acting in a sexy way (that youtube video of little girls dancing to "Single Ladies" is her main example, but she also includes the Miley-Cyrus-public-lap-dance example, and I'm afraid that Miley is now more like a young woman, and a very wealthy, seemingly together one at that), I think we do still have reason to be troubled by this trend. It's counterproductive to just shrug off the moral outrage because that doesn't really get to the problem at hand, in my opinion, it lets the media off the hook. (In full disclosure, I'm working on a book about news media-generated gendered moral panics about adolescent girls in "public recreational space" over the past 100 years, so I do know where she's coming from with this.)
So I guess it is the causal suggestion that is bugging me more. I personally find it hard to believe that anyone could make any real causal connection between a little girl dressing up in a halter top and gyrating Beyonce-style and a tween sending a naked photo of herself to her boyfriend, and I'm bothered this question is even raised, but the psychology professor interviewed is not saying that. He says (in a paraphrased quote) that this display and promotion of SEXINESS has nothing to do with healthy sexuality. Right on. I can't imagine anybody would argue that it would. But where are they getting the ideas in the first place? From the mass media's prevalent representations of girls and young women -- from the dolls she talks about earlier to everything else -- that fits very specifically into a patriarchal understanding of what it means to be feminine, and even more specifically, a feminine sexual being. This means that girls and women are objects of desire, to be watched and admired and possessed, and it's nothing new, but in this era where you can post and share anything from YouTube via Twitter, Facebook, or yes, even antiquated ol' email with as many people as you like, these patriarchal understandings are easily shared on a massive level, instantaneously.
Now, I'd bet that everyone sending the link of the girls dancing to Orenstein was sending it because they assumed she would be an appalled feminist scholar (that's usually the case when my friends send me anything related to girls and the Internet), and I think they were mostly right, though I like that she treats the issue with thoughtfulness and relates that it's more complicated than we might think. However, you cannot guarantee that's going to be the audience's reading of the video (classic encoding and decoding here -- thanks, Stuart Hall). Just as the mantra, "Well, girls ARE mean" seems to have become a totally acceptable statement in our culture, I worry that "Well, girls ARE sexy" or "Girls want to be sexy" will become a totally acceptable statement as well before long. OK, maybe not acceptable, but accepted. Post-structuralist theorist Louis Althusser would characterize this as a classic example of interpellation. The girls have seen plenty of examples of sexiness being enacted throughout their experiences with media and their lived daily (primarily mediated) experiences with peers, society accepts that this happens, the mass and interactive media provide a never-ending feedback loop, and poof. Through interpellation, it's so. Before long, sexuality and sexiness are in fact, mistakenly conflated, as the article suggests they might be.
Furthermore, why do we have to lump all things related to femininity and the Internet together somehow, as if they are actually related? I'd be more inclined to argue against technopanic than gendered moral panic in that case. You see this tendency repeatedly in mass media reporting. Even if the story is about a young girl who met a sexual predator while using MySpace, the lede often will extrapolate, bringing in "social networking," or "the Internet" -- because it's all the same big evil thing. Of course, we should be talking about teenage girls and sexting with mobile devices in the same breath that we use to discuss how a young girl's parent or dance instructor uploaded a video of them dancing in a non-little-girl-ish way to YouTube that was subsequently spread all over the Internet.
Indeed, space constraints never allow reporters or columnists to tell the most complete, most complicated stories (at least as complete and complicated as we long-winded academics wnat to see), and I suppose that is why blogs like this one exist.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Twitter and Girls Studies Scholars
After several years of being what I think could safely be called a freakishly prolific Facebook user, I decided to just quit cold turkey and deactivated my account in April. I admit that I was appalled at all the time I was spending online reading about other people's lives and all the energy I was putting in to writing clever status updates, but I was also more than a little freaked out after hearing a lecture from an FBI agent who specialized in "forensics in digital worlds." Even with your privacy settings jacked, your photos and information on Facebook are still pretty far from private, according to her. In any case, I've been joking that I have been using Twitter as kind of a methadone to Facebook -- a nice step-down, if you will. I'm on it far less and reading tweets takes a lot less energy.
I tend to follow a lot of journalists -- primarily those working in interactive media -- and scholars who study interactive media. I know most of them personally. Online journalism is both a former professional career for me and a research and teaching interest for me. Probably 80 percent of the tweets that I read in a given day have to do with what is happening in the online media industry as it's seen by these scholars and professionals. It's fun, and I feel fairly informed about the issues and scholarship in this arena as a result, but I do feel like we're all just talking at each other to a certain extent and repeating one another to a large extent (though often adding our own snarky commentary to the repeating).
In reading through so many of these tweets, I got to thinking: I wonder if there is a different "feel" within the Twittersphere when you're following scholars and professionals working with girls and media. It's generally a group of feminists, who are interested in equality and frank discussion, and I imagine that all of our Twitter contributions would make my own experience using Twitter a fairly different one.
So, I realized, why not start following a few girls' studies scholars on Twitter?
I searched for all the usual suspects' names -- there are dozens of professors who I thought of off the top of my head -- and I came up with nothing. Nothing! So disappointing!
First, please let me know who I'm missing. Are you on Twitter, updating the world on the latest in girls and media in 140 characters or less? Drop a line, OK? (Or follow me: @chezla).
Second, I have decided that I really need to be more committed to advancing our scholarship to whomever will read it -- on Twitter, in blogs, in journals, and hopefully, in an upcoming book.
I guess that's it. It might translate into more traditional blog posts, or it might not. Blogging is so 2004, isn't it? (At least I think that is what the new media journalists and scholars I follow on Twitter would tell you.) Stay tuned.
I tend to follow a lot of journalists -- primarily those working in interactive media -- and scholars who study interactive media. I know most of them personally. Online journalism is both a former professional career for me and a research and teaching interest for me. Probably 80 percent of the tweets that I read in a given day have to do with what is happening in the online media industry as it's seen by these scholars and professionals. It's fun, and I feel fairly informed about the issues and scholarship in this arena as a result, but I do feel like we're all just talking at each other to a certain extent and repeating one another to a large extent (though often adding our own snarky commentary to the repeating).
In reading through so many of these tweets, I got to thinking: I wonder if there is a different "feel" within the Twittersphere when you're following scholars and professionals working with girls and media. It's generally a group of feminists, who are interested in equality and frank discussion, and I imagine that all of our Twitter contributions would make my own experience using Twitter a fairly different one.
So, I realized, why not start following a few girls' studies scholars on Twitter?
I searched for all the usual suspects' names -- there are dozens of professors who I thought of off the top of my head -- and I came up with nothing. Nothing! So disappointing!
First, please let me know who I'm missing. Are you on Twitter, updating the world on the latest in girls and media in 140 characters or less? Drop a line, OK? (Or follow me: @chezla).
Second, I have decided that I really need to be more committed to advancing our scholarship to whomever will read it -- on Twitter, in blogs, in journals, and hopefully, in an upcoming book.
I guess that's it. It might translate into more traditional blog posts, or it might not. Blogging is so 2004, isn't it? (At least I think that is what the new media journalists and scholars I follow on Twitter would tell you.) Stay tuned.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
It's been WAY too long
I hope that by writing this post I am signaling a return to publishing this blog on Girls and Media. It doesn't always work out that way, but I like to hope that if I'm making some kind of public "announcement" (to all three of my faithful readers! ;-)) that I actually will stick to it. So much work in the realm of girls and media has been done over the past year, and yet, there's so much disturbing fodder to write about. And speaking to that thought, here's a new headline from this morning that you can ponder:
More on that later. Actually, I'm booked to appear on Twin Cities Live tomorrow to talk about that topic as it relates to parenting.
And I feel slightly -- but only slightly -- more equipped to speak of parenting because six months ago, I became a parent myself. I had a wonderful baby girl ... who will never be allowed to own a Bratz doll, wear inflatable high heels for babies, or watch and admire "The Girls Next Door." And for goodness' sake, NO LINGERIE. This isn't so much about being a feminist girls studies scholar as being a parent. There you go.
Looking forward to more discussions about girls and media in the coming months.
Miley Cyrus' little sister the new face of kiddie 'lingerie' line
More on that later. Actually, I'm booked to appear on Twin Cities Live tomorrow to talk about that topic as it relates to parenting.
And I feel slightly -- but only slightly -- more equipped to speak of parenting because six months ago, I became a parent myself. I had a wonderful baby girl ... who will never be allowed to own a Bratz doll, wear inflatable high heels for babies, or watch and admire "The Girls Next Door." And for goodness' sake, NO LINGERIE. This isn't so much about being a feminist girls studies scholar as being a parent. There you go.
Looking forward to more discussions about girls and media in the coming months.
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